Emily Glaze: You do cover a lot of industries. You also mentioned electric vehicles, so let’s talk about the economic development in this area. We’ve covered the slowdown in demand for electric vehicles, how might that affect your business?
PM866 3BSE050200R1 Revathi Advaithi: Of course, if the electric vehicle market slows down, we will definitely be affected. But I think our growth has been overshadowed by our market share gains because of the consolidation that has taken place in our electric vehicle supply chain. So I’m not too worried about the auto industry. I think the automotive industry needs to pay more attention to whether the production capacity can be adapted. Is there enough room for growth? We also have a large electric vehicle market in China, and although the growth has been a bit slow, we have still made some progress recently. The potential for electric vehicles in the future is huge, and our electric vehicle business has a wide presence in North America, Europe and China. So I’m not worried about a slowdown in the auto industry because I think we’re going to have a lot of capacity growth. But sometimes, some markets move more slowly than others.
Emily Glaze: Let’s talk about artificial intelligence next. You’re a member of the supply chain subcommittee, and a lot of work goes into figuring out how to prevent some supply chain challenges. Can you tell us a little bit about the work you’ve been doing on that subcommittee and whether AI can play a key role in solving global supply chain problems?
Revathi Advaithi: That’s a big question. I would say that our focus is first and foremost on the availability of people. For these huge plants that are being built all over the United States, we need talent to run those plants. How, then, should we focus on policies that accommodate an expanding workforce and help manufacturing become a true contributor to the U.S. economy? This is probably a niche area of work.
Emily Glaze: Do you think we’re at that stage yet, or are these factories under construction or in the pipeline that might create vacancies?
Revathi Advaithi: I don’t think we’re there yet. Every day we read articles about how difficult it is to staff certain factories. For manufacturing, at least, training skills sounds easy. But that’s not the case. We have to reach out to many PM866 3BSE050200R1 rural communities and help build community colleges to create a pipeline of talent that really works. This will require a long-term effort. To keep these factories going, you have to have a pretty strong immigration policy. We can suggest a lot, but politicians will do what they have to do. Some suggestions are feasible, others are not considered. But that’s just one theme of the work. The second theme of my work that I want to talk about is around resilience. Think about medical devices, think about how much work there is to do in terms of transparency in the supply chain to make sure we’re really thinking about building long-term resilience. For example, can we get different parts of government and the private sector to work together to create a more transparent supply chain for medical devices? And build a strong supply chain around it. Moreover, we should finally understand what planning looks like in a world of AI and supply chains. But I would say that for the Supply Chain subcommittee, these are the two big themes of the work that we are doing and help us make recommendations.